Grasp
by girlinterrupted22
Summary: This is the untold story of Judith: the person that she really was, and what caused her to make the poor choices that she made. Story takes place between Seasons One and Two, when Joan and Judith are at camp together.
1. Chapter 1

Grasp

There is one thing I know with complete and total certainty: People don't truly appreciate what they have until it's gone. I am the perfect example of this hypothesis. The problem is, I didn't realize it until the day I died.

_"Judith, you do not know what I would __give to have you back the way that you used to be."_

_"But there are some things in life, mother, that you can't take back, some things in life that you can't change, because that's just the way life is," I spit, fighting back tears._

_"Whether that's true or not, I can still, and always will, be your mother," she answered._

_"Get out!" I screamed at her._

_"Judith, I..."_

_"Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out!"_

_I threw my pillow at the door as it shut behind her, but she was gone as it she had never been there. That was how my mother always was though; in and out of my life. She, like time, always faded._

_Lately, I feel the need to internalize my life; never really seeing the need or point in sharing it with others. It wasn't always this way, but the darker half has taken over me, made me me, and filled my personality as my pain spilled out. _

_I can't talk to anybody. Only God knows my inner core, my soul, and I can't even talk to Him. I wasn't always so difficult, I wasn't always so withdrawn. But then, everything fell apart._

Joan's voice snapped me out of my self imposed reverie. "Judith, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you believe in God?"

Silence fell over the cabin we shared as I raised my head from my notebook to meet her gaze. "What?" I asked, after several seconds of silence.

"Do you believe in God?" she repeated.

I rolled my eyes. "Used to, I guess. But it all seems like a gigantic lie."

"Judith," she whispered, "I've seen Him. Talked to Him."

I flopped onto my back on the bed and rolled over to face the wall. "And they said I was nuts?"

"And friendship is dead," she muttered.

"Sorry," I mumbled, turning back around to face her. "I guess I just...I'm sorry."

"It's okay. But, Judith, it's like He's really there. And sometimes, not even a He. Sometimes, He's a She, sometimes He's a little kid, sometimes He even picks up my garbage, for crying out loud!"

I remained silent.

"My whole family thinks I'm crazy. I mean...I'm kind of starting to think I'm crazy."

"Well I am crazy, so we're a pair."

"It's scary, Judith. I don't know how to stop seeing Him."

I sighed. "You want to know my take, Joan? You don't have to stop seeing Him. You just have to stop talking about it. That's what they all want."

_"Judith, what's with you lately?" Lisa put a hand against my locker to hold it shut. "You're never around anymore. I calle dyou last night, and you didn't call me back."_

_I pulled my locker door open against her hand and grabbed my geometry book from inside before slamming it shut again. "I'm around."_

_"And I am too," she answered. "Sometimes, we even used to hang around together."_

_As we moved down the hallway towards class, I heard another group of students in the hallway behind us, and I started walking faster. "I guess," I shrugged._

_"I miss you, Judith. You're, like, my best friend."_

_"Lis', I'm sorry, I just...I have a lot on my mind lately, that's all."_

_That's was when he touched my arm, grazing me in the middle of the school, invading my space, uttering a simple, "Hey, Judith."_

_I remember darkness. I remember my the bang of my book hitting the tile floor. After that, nothing. _

"What do you mean?" Joan asked. Her fingers caught up in her hair, and she twisted it around into thick strands while I answered.

"It's like this, Joan." Noticing a tear in the wallpaper, I sat up in bed and began peeling it off in little strips. "If you make them think that you don't see Him anymore, whether you really see Him or not, they'll think that you're cured. Major ego trip for the docs, and you get to go home. Bonuses for all."

"But..."

"Put it this way. If you don't see Him, if you pretend like none of it ever happened, then you're not crazy anymore."

_ I woke up in the nurse's office. Lisa was there, the nurse was there, and __he was there. I had eyes only for him though, only for Ryan. "Get away from me," I hissed, my voice hardly more than a rasp._

_I struggled to push myself up off of the cot, but the nurse touched my should to keep me down. "Honey, you need to stay down. The ambulance is..."_

_She was touching me, someone was touching me, and I just wanted her off. I slapped at her hand, shrieking, "Get away from me, don't touch me, don't touch me!"_

_"Judith?" Lisa took a step towards the bed._

_I shrank back, managing to pull myself to an upright position._

_"Judith," the nurse said, "you need to stay calm for me, okay?"_

_There was a huge weight on my chest, forcing all of the breath out of me. I scooted off the cot and found myself in the corner. My eyes were wide open, but I couldn't really see anything but the fog. Everyone around me seemed so foreign, everything seemed fake. "Get away, stay away," I whispered._

_"Judith, are you okay?" Lisa knelt down in front of me, and started to push my hair out of my face._

_"Get away, get away, get away from me!" I screamed, yanking away from her._

_Two male paramedics entered the room as the nurse made Lisa and Ryan leave. One put a blood pressure cuff on me, and the other was holding my hand and pricking my finger with a little needle. "No, please," I moaned, "stop..."_

_My head was filled with a sudden roaring. They were all talking to me, but I couldn't make out any sounds. Everything around me was spinning, and every single touch made my body feel like it was going into shock. The world consisted solely of me, and Ryan, and the night he raped me.  
_

**To Be Continued**_  
_


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, Judith." 

I looked up from my dinner as Joan sat down across from me. "Hey."

"Thanks for last night," she said, unwrapped her plastic pre-packaged silverware.

"Thanks for what?" I asked.

"For what you said. It almost seemed easier today."

I shook my head. "I don't get it," I said, stuffing a shrimp of a meatball into my mouth.

"I don't know," she shrugged, "it's almost like I can almost convince myself, you know? I think...I think that I need to believe that I'm not crazy. Maybe I really was just...sick, you know? Like they all said? And as long as I can keep telling them that, I'll start to believe it myself."

"I guess," I answered.

_"Judith, honey? Are you awake?"_

_I fixed my gaze on the ceiling. The tiny tiles seemed to go on forever in the small room, the only light the moonlight seeping through the window. I turned my head towards my mother; my only acknowledgment of her words. The effort to talk was just too much._

_"Hi, sweetheart," she said, taking my hand._

_My eyes were fogging over, and I found it hard to focus on her face. "Mommy?"_

_She was silent for a moment, before saying, "I don't get it, Judith. I just don't get it."_

_I struggled to bring my mind into sharper focus. "Huh?"_

_"I don't get what's going on with you. Your father and I, we used to know you so well. But lately, you've just become somebody else. And today...This was just...When they couldn't get you to wake up, it was the scariest moment of my life. I just don't understand."_

_"I was tired, Mom, in more ways than one I guess..." I let my voice trail off, leaving the unspoken words hanging in the air. "I...I'm afraid of things. I'm afraid of so many things. I'm afraid of moving on and living. I'm afraid of...I'm afraid of moving on and living. I don't know how to do this, Mom. I don't know how..." I wanted to cry so badly, I wanted so badly to just feel, but I couldn't let myself. I just couldn't allow it._

_My mother shook her head. "I still don't get it."_

_I fix my eyes on the light switch on the wall behind my mother. It was time. "Mom...Ryan Hunter...raped me."_

_My mom let go of my hand and got up to pace along the other side of the room. She said nothing._

_"Mom?"_

_"The doctors said that you had some kind of a mental breakdown. Is this part of that?"_

_"I...I'm not sure what you mean by that." I wasn't sure what reaction I had been looking for with my revelation, but this wasn't it._

_"Judith..." she paused, taking in a deep breath. "Ryan Hunter is a practically a part of our family. You two have always been so close. I...don't know where this...is coming from."_

_My jaw tensed as my teeth ground together, and I whispered, "He...raped...me..."_

_"Judith, I..."  
I could see it in her eyes. "You don't believe me. You think I'm a liar."  
"I didn't say that, Judith, I...I just, I don't know how to process this. I can't..."_

_"I am your daughter. If you can't believe me, mother, then leave."_

_She came back to the bed, and tried to take my hand again. I pushed her away._

_"Leave," I said again._

_My mother turned and walked away, straight out the door.  
_

**To Be Continued**


	3. Chapter 3

"So...Judith?"

"Yeah?"

Joan hesitated, her hand freezing over the duffel bag she was putting her stuff in. "You going to keep in touch?"

"After? We'll see."

"You saved me, you know."

I stayed silent.

"Taught me how it needs to be. This is how it needs to be. Right?"

I wrapped a strand of hair around my finger and yanked, pulling it out from the roots. "It has to be, I guess. It's what they want from us."

"I,"

"If you say it wasn't true," I interrupted, "if you say it never happened, then it goes away."

She sighed. "I have, like, twenty two lamps to carry home. Really wish I could have made something else, you know?"

"I guess."

_"Judith?"_

_I was squeezed into the corner of the bed, next to yet another lamp that I had made. The man in the khakis was annoying me. He was too...professional. Too callous. _

_"Can you explain this whole thing to me...why you changed this story?"_

_'Because I can't do this with no one believing in me. There's nobody that believes in me. Because my whole entire life has blown up, and I just want this to be over. I just want to rebuild,' I thought. Out loud, I said, "I had so much crap in my head...I was afraid of losing things, I was afraid of being in a relationship, of losing that relationship...but he never did the things that I said he did."_

_"Where do you want to go from here, Judith?"_

_That part was easy. "I want to deal with loss. I don't...know how to pick up the pieces."_

"Judith? You okay?"

I smiled. "Yeah, I will be. I've got to let it go."

_I've got to let this go. I gritted my teeth. "Ryan Hunter was the love of my life. And then...I sensed this whole change in our relationship. I got afraid of him leaving, and I figured that if I made up this story, I could make him leave before he did it on purpose, you know?"_

_Dr. Dan nodded. "It makes sense. We've done enough work for today. You can go back to your room."_

_I walked slowly, the world around me in a haze. I took out my notebook and folded myself into the nearest chair, beginning to write._

_To anyone who may read this:_

_Ryan Hunter is/was a friend of my family. One night he wanted more from me than friendship. I told him no, said it over and over. We were both drunk, and that was no excuse for his behavior, but we were both drunk, and...He raped me. _

_Now people want me to say that it never happened. I can't prove that it happened, I didn't say anything right away; I didn't tell anybody. It is easier to give up than to fight it, because fighting this system is harder than just riding along on it. So from tonight, this night, July whatever...It never happened._

_I only write this for me, just so that somebody knows._

_Because somebody needs to know._

_There is something wrong with Ryan Hunter, and it goes deeper than anything I could ever understand._

_I ripped out the piece of paper, folded it up several times, and stuck it into the back pocket of my notebook. I had to let it go._

I took out my notebook and scribbled down my address. "Might be nice to have a real friend, Joan, you know, if you ever wanna call." As I ripped the piece of paper out, a folded up piece of paper fell out of the back pocket into my lap.

I handed Joan my address, and she ripped off the bottom half of the page to write her own down.

I opened up the paper and started to read. "To anyone who may read this: Ryan Hunter..."

I shook my head and folded the paper back up. Joan had turned around to get something from underneath her bed, and I quickly stuck the paper into the side pocket of her bag. Someone needed to know the truth, and something told me that it might as well be Joan.

Joan pulled yet another lamp out from under the bed. "This is it, I guess."

"Yeah."

"When are you leaving?"

I closed my notebook and tossed it on to the pillow. "I guess it's in my grasp now, the whole 'reality' thing."

"That's cool...I'll call you sometime."

"That'd be great," I replied honestly.

Joan picked up her bag and slung it over one shoulder. "My mom and dad are outside waiting. I've gotta go." She took the couple steps across the room to hug me. I hugged her back-the first real hug I'd given in months. "I'll see you around, Judith."

I nodded. "See you, Joan."

As she walked out the door, I was sure she was walking out of my life. With that, I trusted her with the knowledge of reality, of my reality, like I would never trust anyone else. It was time to let it go, but even in the letting go...somebody had to know.

Ryan Hunter was evil. Ryan Hunter always would be evil. And even in the light context of telling in which I told...somebody had to know. I knew it way down deep inside of me, the darkest truth...that Ryan Hunter was going to blow the whole world apart.


End file.
